The Time Paradox : Beijing

The book 'The Time Paradox' by Philip Zimbardo has imparted to me many new and interesting ways to look at time. One insight that struck me was Zimbardo's views of the relativity of time and specifically how our perceptions of time affect the way we spend it. He says that any given task will swell in to the time frame it is given and this affects our perception of the task and our usage of time for the task. For example a student given a three week due date for a essay will percieve that (due to the time frame) the assignment must be fairly complex and timely, and will most likely use the full three weeks for this task. (Even as lots of students do, if they leave the task to the last minute, they will still percieve that the three week essay should, at least appear, to contain three weeks worth of work). The three week timeframe will swell the task's percieved importance. Students given the same task but just a one day timeframe would have very different perceptions about the task.

When I'm flying, sleeping at the wrong times and spending time down route, I'm either gaining or losing time and either maximising or wasting time. My flying job is so time focussed that it offers most appropriate senarios to reflect upon what Zimbardo calls our most precious commodity - Time.

On more layovers than I'd like to admit, I do nothing. Quite literally Not A Thing. Fortunately, there are also the layovers where I do so much in the same (usually short) amount of time that I am sure time must of stretched somehow to allow for it.

Recently I had one such "wasted" layover recently in Beijing.

The flight departed at 4am. I arrived at the hotel in Beijing at 5pm that day, after a 6.5 hour flight. I lost 4 hours (as Beijing is 4 hours ahead). Due to the ungodly departure time from Dubai, when I reached Beijing I crashed out until 12 midnight. Being a vegetarian I find Chinese restaurants and supermarkets frightening at the best of times and wasn't about to venture out at midnight for food. Despite the dairy and gluten, I ordered a pizza. The mini bar's red wine, pringles and chocolate, and HBO's string of midnight romantic comedies kept me happy untill 5am when I fell back to sleep. At 9am I awoke - groggy -, looked at the clock and decided not to meet the girls at 9:30am for shopping. I slept on and off until 5pm. Each time I awoke, the dilema of whether to get up or not presented itself. But each time, a quick decision in favour of sleep won out  - (the reasoning being: it would be better to sleep as long as possible now as I may not be able to sleep before the flight anyway).
At 5pm though I did arise. I showered, ordered an iron, extra water and began my layover with all of 3 hours left! I spent those 3 hours at Starbucks, then packing and getting ready for the flight. The flight back was 7.5 hours, I gained 4 hours on the way back, arrived home at 5:30am and woke up at 12pm ready to face the world. Phew! I'm not sure on all the numbers, but I know there was not a lot of "useful" hours there and those hours watching TV and eating are hardly useful anyway.

So Little...

(View from my hotel window - the most exciting place I visited was the Starbucks across the the road)


Luckily I have another Beijing trip for comparison. Similarly on this trip we also arrived at the hotel at 5pm. I slept till 7:30pm, met some of the crew at 8pm and went for dinner in the city (the traditional Chinese restaurant needs a blog of its own). We then went clubbing at Mix and got back to the hotel at 4am. The alarm rang at 7:30am and at 8am I met some other crew in the lobby and we drove nearly two hours to the Great Wall. There we took the cable car up and down and spent about 1 hour taking photos and walking between the forts of the wall. On the way back we toured Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City. We arrived back at the hotel just before 5pm. I slept untill 8:30pm and then headed back to Dubai.
I did so much in the exact number of hours that I later was to do so little.

What I find interesting is that if I entertain the perception that 'there's not much time on the layover', I quite successfully can fill an entire 36 hours doing nothing. If however I percieve that there is lots of time, I am equally as succesful in maximising those hours with sightseeing, dinner, clubbing, shopping whatever...

Sometimes I think that our short time frames on layovers are a blessing. The lack of time forces me to maximise it; I'm up and out asap - no time for recovering from jet lag or settling in as I would do if I was on holiday, its go, go, go.
At the end of the layover, it really is just about perception. As I have proved to myself so much can be done in a day, or so little and its just a matter of deciding which it is going to be. And though I'd always like more time on layovers, more time could also just make for more time to waste!

Or So Much...

Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China!